I work in the powdered metal industry. For those of you unfamiliar with the business, we take various metal powders(duh) and put them into big compacting machines which then compress the powder with several tons of force into the shape of a part. Disc shaped washers, small gears, threaded hex nuts, and countless other little metal doohickeys that you use all the time without even knowing it are all commonly made in factories just like the one I work in.
The next part of the process in making powdered metal parts is called sintering. This is simply sending the parts through a large furnace at temperatures varying from 1500 to 2100 degrees Fahrenheit, allowing the metal particles to bond together, and make a finished part. This is where I come in. My job is to load the parts into the furnace and unload them when they are coming out of the back, as well as checking key dimensions on the parts after sintering is complete. More or less, here is the entirety of a standard workday running parts made of iron powder via bad drawings:
Step 1: Blow loose powder off of parts.
Step 2: Slide parts from tray to furnace belt.
Step 3: Wait.
Step 4: Repeat steps 1-3 for fifty minutes
Step 5: Walk sixty feet to the other end of the furnace.
Step 6: Fill out part inspection sheet.
And then you get to repeat steps one thru six FOR TEN HOURS! WHOO PARTY CENTRAL!
Then there are two very special types of orders that I absolutely loathe to run: Stainless steel parts, and infiltrated parts. Both of these are pretty similar to running standard iron parts, but with a couple of exceptions that make them absolutely infuriating.
When sintering parts made of stainless steel, you have to use these stupid metal foil trays, otherwise the parts become contaminated and turn a lovely shade of green. Personally, I prefer them that way, but the customers buying the parts have a slightly differing opinion. Yet even when you use the trays that are supposed to prevent the discoloration of the parts, half the time the ones near the edge of the tray still end up with contaminants and even if that doesn't happen, this weird crusty gunk(I believe it is all the contaminants that get burned out of iron based parts) can fall onto the parts and ruin them anyway. Like I said, infuriating. And to top it all off, the trays smell awful when they come out of the furnace. As soon as you dump the parts out of the tray and into a barrel, your nose becomes the victim of a terrible tragedy. It's like someone took a shit in a pot of brackish coffee and then shot it up your nostrils with a turkey baster.
As if this wasn't enough to make me despise stainless steel, if any oxygen touches the parts while they are being sintered they are ruined. The brilliant solution to this problem is to pump a bunch of excess hydrogen into the furnace, which then catches fire. Fire, as you should know, needs oxygen to burn. So, no oxygen even stands a chance of touching the parts while they are being sintered. However, side effects may include loss of eyebrows, third degree burns, and drowning in your own sweat as the furnace belches fire at you all day long.
Infiltrated parts are not nearly as exciting as they sound. There is no espionage involved(I know, I was really disappointed too). What actually happens is you melt a set amount of copper into the part. This copper fills the gaps between particles, making them stronger. But of course, there's a catch. You have to put the parts on carbon plates, because if you don't, the copper will go right through them and melt into the furnace belt. I am not sure of the ramifications of this and even though I hate my job, it's not worth losing to such a stupid experiment. Additionally, the parts are not allowed to touch each other, unless of course you want a cluster of forty gears that will never, ever, EVER come apart.
And of course, the same unholy stench from the stainless steel trays radiates off of the carbon plates after they are run through the furnace, albeit to a lesser extent. But my absolute favorite part about running infiltration is the way the copper residue has to be scrubbed off of the part. Not only is this time consuming and very irritating, but the residue turns my sweat a color that somehow evokes Baja Blast Mountain Dew, snot, and piss all at the same time. I tried to draw something in MS Paint to illustrate this point, but there just is no way to find the proper color. I will have to obtain photographic evidence in order to make anyone understand.
Of course, there are lots of other, small things that bother me just like I'm sure everyone has little pet peeves in the workplace that drive them up the wall. And had I not been subjected to both of these atrocious tasks multiple times this past work week, I probably would not have written this at all. But as it is, I am in the market for a new job. Anything has to be better than this.
Two years ago, I was the drummer for a punk rock band called 40$ Boner. Yes, the number forty, then a dollar sign, then Boner. That is the correct way to write my old band's name. Anyhow, semantics aside, the band got its name from the singer's cousin, a bloated, aging drunkard that everyone calls Opie. We went to his place in Ohio to visit and catch a Less Than Jake/Reel Big Fish show with Against All Authority and Streetlight Manifesto opening. After the gig, we stopped at a White Castle and got ourselves about 200 cheeseburgers.
As we are driving back to his house, Opie shoveling down those tasty little squares of bowel-liquefying goodness and hucking the cartons out the window onto the interstate, the conversation turns to my recent birthday.
Opie- "You guys are all 18 now, so you should go to a strip club. You won't get laid, but you'll get a $40 boner."
Jess(Opie's fiancee)- "That is an excellent name for a band."
It turns out that Jess was very right. Whenever I talk to someone and the topic shifts to my hobbies and interests, things usually turn out like this:
Me- "Oh, I write, draw, play in a band, make hemp jewelry..."
Hypothetical Conversation Partner- "Oh really? What's your band called?"
Sometimes, this is a hard question to answer. Not that I've forgotten the name of my band, but how do you tell your grandma that your band is named after a stiffy you get at a strip club?
Me- "...40$ Boner."
Which provokes one of two reactions.
Thankfully, most of the people that my group of friends and I seem to attract display the latter reaction. Once you make someone laugh, generally you're on their good side. And it is this that led us to travel five and a half hours to Danbury Connecticut on Black Friday, 2008.
We were booked to play a mini-festival of sorts called Punkskaving. It was a one-day thing featuring at least 18 bands, most notably Bomb the Music Industry, Sonic Boom Six, and Big D and the Kids Table(who ended up not showing for personal reasons, I'm told). It was the first out-of-state gig any of us had ever been offered, and if not for all the turkey we had gorged ourselves on at our respective Thanksgiving dinners, I don't think any of us would have slept at all that night.
As it was, we all got a few hours of sleep at La Casa Boner, woke up at 2:30 AM and piled into unofficial band mother Suz's Hyundai for the long trip ahead of us. We were told that the music started early, and we certainly didn't want to miss our time slot. Mostly, the ride was dark, cramped, and hazy, though we did stop at a gas station where I found a doorknob at the gas pump and the patrons inside remarked upon seeing us "Oh, look, it's some rock band coming through town." Here is a video of us in the car after daylight finally broke, though I can't remember if that was before or after we got free coffee and donuts from boy scouts at a rest stop:
Soon enough, we found ourselves at the venue. We unloaded the equipment from our rickety black trailer, then went down the street to a parking lot with a pizza parlor, liquor store, and one of those "Everything's a Dollar!" places full of useless, one-time-use-then-it-breaks merchandise from China.We lock up the car and with plenty of time to kill before the gig starts, we walk up the block in the golden early morning sun that only shows itself properly in the cold months of the year. Before we knew it, we were walking past taller buildings and plenty of store fronts with signs only in Spanish. This should not have surprised us, yet coming from the backwoods of Pennsylvania, it was a tad unexpected. Deciding it was a good idea to head back before we got lost, we went back to the parking lot to eat pizza and check out the crappy merchandise at the dollar store.
I believe it was around noon that our friends Winks and Autumn arrived. We met them in the parking lot, and pretty soon we came to a very unfortunate conclusion: Someone had locked the keys in the Hyundai. It was also around this time that Autumn bought Suz a bottle of rum. Perhaps these events are related? Either way, we called a locksmith, mixed up some Danbury Brew(rum and Gatorade), and waited. And drank In an open parking lot. At 12:30 PM. Underage. Out of state. Clearly, we thought we were pretty hot shit.
Eighty five dollars and one random video of the locksmith on my camera later..
..and all is well again. Crisis averted, we trudge our way back to the venue to wait. It was a little hole in the wall kind of place named Billy Baloney's, their myspace page declaring that we had just arrived at the "rock capital of Connecticut." There was a stage, so for once we finally felt like a legitimate band. Considering most of our previous gigs had been in the basement of a pizza place about six miles out of our hometown, it really was an exciting step up. The music started at 2, and we played at 3:30. I knew immediately that this was bad news. I looked from the gatorade bottles, to my bandmates, to the clock, then back to the gatorade. Whoo boy. Well, we've played drunk before, so maybe it won't be so bad?
Two bands played before us, both comprised of I would guess fifteen year olds. One was Loud Youth, who played songs like "Let's Get Famous and Sell Out to Guitar Hero." Up next was Killing Pit for Decadence, who wanted so bad to be a hardcore band, but also wanted to use a set of bongos as a snare drum. As Allie would put it, incongruity detected. Still, it was kind of nice to see the younger generation trying to enter the scene and form bands of their own, even if it wasn't quite so nice to hear. I remember when we were like that. Submitted for your viewing pleasure, the only music video any of my bands have ever put out, What Would Fonzy Do, by my first punk band, the late Necropolis.
I don't blame you if you couldn't sit through the whole thing.
Next, we took the stage. Surprisingly, for most of us being drunk at 3:30 PM, we played a half decent show. We have some pictures up on our Myspace, but they're kind of dark. There are also two videos from that day on there, but the sound quality is "meh" at best. Everyone was dancing and a good time was had all around.
After we played, the next band asked to use my drum set. I decided to go check out the other venues at this point. It was dusk now, and here we were, in a strange town full of new people, all participating in this big orgy of music. I can still see myself walking out of Billy Baloney's into the sunset soaked street, a wistful nostalgia for this day already beginning to develop. I don't remember any of the other bands that I saw that night besides the Un Posse, who were like Streetlight Manifesto if it were being played at a pep rally.
After they were finished, we loaded up our equipment into the trailer and I left my band mates behind as Suz, Winks, Autumn and I took off in search of a hotel for the night. We stopped in a barber shop up the street to ask for directions to a hotel. The nice man inside sent us on a quest for a Denny's, where they have those traveler guidebooks full of coupons, and informed us that we would find the hotels on that side of town. His advice proved invaluable, because otherwise we would have been sleeping in our cars.We stop and pick up two cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon, then pull into a Wal Mart parking lot to pick up swimming suits because are you kidding me? Of course we're going to find a hotel with a swimming pool!
Brief aside: For at least two years, I had this one particular hat that I wore every day. This was towards the end of its life when it was very dirty, and finally I just embraced the fact that my hat was soon to be filthy enough that the germs on it would develop a highly organized society and potentially gain sentience. So I stopped caring. I wore my hat to work, while playing shows, tossed it on the ground, and even started ashing my cigarettes in it when there was no ashtray available.
Walking out of Wal Mart ahead of some of my friends, I notice this awful smell. I look around, and in a brief moment of racism, I connect the scent assaulting my nostrils with all of the Mexicans I see in the building. I shuffle back to the car and take my place in the backseat and light a cigarette.
Me- Jesus, Danbury smells like garbage. Have you gotten a whiff of it yet?
Winks- Haha no, is it bad?
Me- Absolutely terrible.
Pretty soon everyone else comes back, and I'm ashing in my hat like usual. Then the exact same stench returns, even stronger than before. I wrinkle my nose in disgust.
Me- See, there it is again! It smells like burning rubber and enchiladas!
I look down as I'm ashing my cigarette again, and I notice that my hat is on fire. I have no idea how long it had been burning since my cigarette smoke covered up the smoke drifting out of my disgusting dirty hat, but it had almost burned the whole way through. I quickly swat at the embers so my pants don't go up in flames as well, and everyone in the car starts laughing hysterically. And that's how I learned that you shouldn't ash your cigarettes out in your hat.
We return to Billy Baloney's to pick up the rest of the band. By now it was totally dark and we were all pretty ready to go to the hotel and swim and drink beer and generally feel like rock stars. The guys were raving about one of the acts we missed, a man who calls himself The Emotron. Since I have no first hand account of his act, just watch this video.
Even that cannot completely capture the essence of the Emotron, but it does a much better job at explaining his position than I could ever hope to. We snagged this photo in front of the venue, then took off for the hotel.
Left to right: Andy Wyant-guitar, Paul Sherry-Bass, me with the gross hat on, Mike Bailey-guitar, Mason Cramer-vocals
We go back to the hotel, secure our rooms, and set up shop. The only place we had to put the beer was the bathroom sink. Pro tip: You can fit four buckets of ice and thirty cans of PBR in a hotel sink. I took this picture and sent it to Pabst's advertisement department, but I never received any response. I don't know why.
We decided to swim before drinking, figuring we would probably drown if we got drunk first. And I swear to Christ that was the saltiest, nastiest pool water ever. What did they fill it with? The tears of orphans who watched their parents die? Run off from the gym next door? It was frankly disgusting and repulsive and we still swam around in it for about 45 minutes.
We went back to the rooms too tired to drink more than a couple of beers apiece. We woke up and ate the awful continental breakfast, then started the agonizingly long drive home. It was a cold, clear Fall day where everything has a tinge of gold to it. I laid in the back of Suz's Hyundai almost the whole time, playing Pokemon and trying to make my iPod block out In The Decemberwrist by The Emotron which was playing on repeat most of the way home. We stopped at a truck stop for some food, fixed a broken hinge on the trailer door with a piece of wire and a screwdriver, and finally returned home sometime around 6 PM a few hundred dollars poorer, worn out and cramped up from the car rides, yet still feeling like we were on top of the world.
